Southend Council has agreed to spend an additional £730,000 for one-off schemes and projects across the borough.The biggest spend is an additional £250,000 to carry out a programme of major patch repairs on roads across Southend.

Local authorities across south Essex are working together to support the training of over 1,600 local people for jobs in the construction industry by 2020.This follows a successful bid for £1m of funding from the Construction Skills Fund.